And another popular Linux distribution pushes a new release out the door. This time around, it's openSUSE, as they just released version 12.1. Other than the usual latest and greatest version of all the open source desktops and associated tools, there's a few other interesting tidbits in this release as well.

+1
You hit the nail on the head. The problem comes down to the Vendors, not to the people that write the OS. But even saying so, Linux devs have done a brillant job supporting masses of hardware, often without any help from the Vendor of that hardware!